This week, the Philadelphia Film Festival takes over the City of Brotherly Love, kicking off Thursday, October 15th, with Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York and running through October 25th, when Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut brings the festivities to a close. This year marks the festival’s 35th year with over 100 films screening across 10 days.
The festival’s Centerpiece program is stacked with awards-season hopefuls and buzzy titles, including Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, Sundance winner Josephine, La Bola Negra, Paper Tiger, and Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. Rockwell is pulling double duty in the fest, also lending his voice to Brad Bird’s sci-fi noir Ray Gunn—because apparently, one potentially scene-stealing performance just isn’t enough.
Beyond those heavy hitters, the Masters of Cinema program has plenty more to get excited about, including Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Danny Boyle’s Ink, and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. But the two titles I’m personally most eager to catch are the eccentric Radu Jude’s latest The Diary of a Chambermaid and the live-action adaptation of Look Back, based on the manga by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto. Look Back is a different beast entirely. It trades the carnage for something much more intimate and emotionally devastating, exploring creativity, friendship, and the ways art can connect us.
A few more can’t-miss picks include the Filmadelphia block, a Philly-centric showcase featuring everything from a documentary about the Phillie Phanatic (Big Phan) to films shot in and around the City of Brotherly Love. Beyond the hometown highlights, Nuisance Bear, one of my favorite documentaries to come out of Sundance, examines the forced migration of polar bears and the increasingly complicated relationship between the animals and the humans sharing their territory. There’s also Eleanor Coppola’s Making Marie Antoinette, a behind-the-scenes look at Sofia Coppola’s criminally underrated classic, arriving just in time for the film’s 20th anniversary, and Naza, a documentary from the co-directors of 2024’s No Other Land that turns its focus to the atrocities unfolding in Gaza.
And if the usual parade of indie darlings and awards hopefuls isn’t enough to get you out of the house, the Philadelphia Film Society has another trick up its sleeve: a new 70mm projector at its flagship Philadelphia Film Center, which is quickly becoming a destination for celluloid devotees. Two festival screenings are taking full advantage of the upgrade, with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey both screening in 70mm. Having experienced 2001in the format during its theatrical reissue a few years back, I can’t recommend it enough. There are some movies you watch, and then there are movies that you just lose yourself in. This is absolutely the latter, and seeing it projected in 70mm is the best example I’ve seen of this format.
Get more info here at https://filmadelphia.org/festival/films/ and start making those impossible screening decisions, and I’ll see you out there!
